Comedy is Serious Business

India has never been short of comedy. Whether it is the genteel humour of Hrishikesh Mukherjee or Jaspal Bhatti’s Flop Show,we’ve had our share of laughs. Now,laughter has become serious business. For one,we’re getting used to stand-up comedy. “Once upon a time,stand-up comics barely got any space in the public mind. But of late,they’re coming into their own as people are becoming enamoured of this form,” says Bhatti.

Many people attribute this sudden rise in popularity to the TV show The Great Indian Laughter Challenge and the prominence of some of its winners like Raju Shrivastava. “Laughter Challenge launched stand-up comedy in a big way in India,” says Pankaj Saraswat,whose new show on Star One,Hans Baliye,falls in the line of stand-up shows that followed the success of Laughter Challenge. The other shows include Comedy Circus and Chote Miyan,which featured children. Hans Baliye,Saraswat claims,is different from the others because here couples will be performing together. “These are real-life showbiz couples who’ll be kidding each other and poking fun at marital life. It’s all in good fun.” None of the actors is seasoned comedians,although some of them do have some background like Tanaz Irani,who’ll appear on the show with her husband Bakhtiya Irani.

It is not just television that has given a home to stand-up comedians. The leading UK comedy club,The Comedy Store,is opening its first Indian branch in Mumbai next week. Founder Don Ward notes the popularity that comics like Russell Peters have enjoyed in India for the past few years and says,“We believe India is ready for ‘observational comedy’ in addition to what they now have on TV,but live comedy is very different and the interaction with audience is really exciting.”

However Bhatti laments that while comedy has evolved in other media,newspaper cartoons and comics remain woefully inadequate. “There was a time when people woke up to cartoons on the front pages. Now they’re hard to find. It could be because the generation of great cartoonists is almost over. Then it’s a sad day for us.”